You might recall that Apple's 64-bit A7 chip wasn't met with universal acclaim after its announcement (for whatever reasons), and few critics were quite so vocal as mobile chip manufacturer Qualcomm. Just last week, a representative of the company called it a "marketing gimmick," but as Cnet reports, Qualcomm's already backtracked on that odd assertion.

The representative in question was Anand Chandrasekher, Qualcomm's chief marketing officer, who claimed the A7 chip grants iPhone 5s users "zero benefit" besides memory accessibility in an interview with the IDG News Service. He nevertheless added that Qualcomm was in the process of making its own 64-bit chip, but he "sees it more beneficial from engineering, chip design, and operating system standpoints." If that strikes you as contradictory in itself, you're not alone.

Yesterday, though, an unnamed Qualcomm spokesperson wrote an email that rejected such claims. "The comments made by Anand Chandrasekher, Qualcomm CMO, about 64-bit computing were inaccurate," the email said. "The mobile hardware and software ecosystem is already moving in the direction of 64-bit; and, the evolution to 64-bit brings desktop class capabilities and user experiences to mobile, as well as enabling mobile processors and software to run new classes of computing devices."

Qualcomm said no more beyond that. The iPhone 5s is the first smartphone to support such technology, and analysts estimate that Apple has about a year edge over its Android competitors in this regard. Qualcomm likely saw that the iPhone 5s marks the first step in a larger shift, and didn't want to be caught justifying itself everytime it made a new chip. Cult of Mac probably said it best: "Remember when Ballmer said the iPhone would be a dud, and how well that worked out for him? Yeah."